Should You Gate Your Event Agenda or Give It Away?

[00:00:00] Nobody in events is chasing clicks. We're chasing registrations, leads, pipeline, the number we typically hand off to the C-suite. But every one of those only exists because somebody clicked something. The click isn't the goal, it's the receipt. My guest today ran paid campaigns for some of the biggest shows on the planet. More than 2,000 a year in more than 40 countries. So she's holding more receipts than almost anybody alive.

[00:00:28] And she's here to tell us they're about to stop printing. So how do you prove an event works when the trail completely disappears? The future of event marketing isn't about getting people to click, it's about getting them to click with you. It's EVENT ABOUT IT with Laura Davidson.

[00:00:53] Hey everybody, welcome to EVENT ABOUT IT. I'm your host, Megan Martin. And my guests today built Tag Digital out of Glasgow into the paid media agency behind some of the biggest

[00:01:04] trade shows on the planet. Freeman bought the company last year and she's now the Senior Vice President of Digital at MDG. She also taught digital marketing at the Digital Marketing Institute, which I find really funny because her degree is in law and English. Welcome to the studio, Laura. I am so glad to have you here. Yay! Thank you so much. I am delighted to be here today.

[00:01:28] Well, first thing I want to know is how in the world did you get into digital marketing with a background in law and English? Yeah, that's a great question. So I've always loved like the legal and the English world like I've read every single day since I probably could read and I always loved that space.

[00:01:49] But I was fascinated by media and I was fascinated by writing and it kind of evolved into, I did some early internships like at TV stations, at newspapers, at magazines, and I like loved that world. And then I think that media landscape evolved into digital media. And so I had a job at my first job was at like a startup, which was we were trying to do YouTube for business.

[00:02:19] And then everyone just kind of used YouTube for their business. But it was a great experience and we like learned a lot and we traveled all over and tried to raise money and it was a great learning experience. And after that, I think we were always keen to start our own thing. So Craig, my then boyfriend, now husband, his stepfather had always run his own business and he'd kind of seen that and modeled that.

[00:02:47] And so we were very young and we thought, okay, let's let's get that a go. And we started it when we were 24. That was our kind of first start. And it was a bit, you know, it was a bit broader than just the paid media. We did web and email and social and all the digital things. And I think we've just kept evolving into what's next, what's next, what's next.

[00:03:11] Yeah, I, I love a happy accident. And I think most people in this industry have kind of fallen into the industry. No, not many people have trained to be here. Yeah, it's a fun industry and like events are a fun thing to do. Like marketing is fun, digital is fun. So all kind of came together quite nicely.

[00:03:31] Yeah. And you guys had kind of an aha moment when you were starting the company of it didn't initially start out working in events and then you ended up picking up some event business and then realizing like that was the niche you were going to go all in. Oh, yeah, definitely. The beginning we were like, OK, we're going to start a company and we're going to see if we can create products and people will want those things.

[00:03:55] So it was things like social media training for local businesses and pretty humble beginnings, you know, websites and email campaigns, but just like small local businesses. And then we were doing that in Scotland and then we decided to move to London. And so we thought, OK, we can we can do the same thing there. And we did. And we got clients there. And then we got our first kind of large corporate client, which was then UBM. And does now inform us still really happily our client today.

[00:04:25] And we started doing work for them paid media some of their kind of early shows. And then we got a call from Ocean Media, who was another large client at the time. And they were like, oh, we hear you guys are doing a good job in events. And so we started working for them. And so it was quite client led initially. And then we realized like this is really a niche we should double down and we should focus on. And we kind of found homes for all of our other clients with friends that had other agencies.

[00:04:54] And we focused. And I think the nature of it was we would get led into different divisions, different countries. People would leave and they take us with them. So it just kind of organically grew into this thing. And we became very specialized within the space. Oh, I love that. There's so many like entrepreneurial lessons in there. Biggest one, mainly just listening to your customers in the market and kind of leaning in when it gives you a lane and kind of leaning into that.

[00:05:24] Like the biggest thing, I think, was when we started exporting. So, I mean, it sounds grandiose for what we were actually doing. Like we're working in London. We're working with clients in fashion and retail. And then they were like, oh, you should talk to our team in Dubai. You should talk to our team in New York. We're like, yeah, OK, like flew over, got on a plane. And all of a sudden we were this international business kind of six years in. And and still now the businesses is hugely international.

[00:05:52] Maybe 20 percent of our revenue actually comes from the UK. The rest is international, but it was absolutely in lead for sure. Yeah, that's amazing. OK, well, I want to play a fun game and our game today is called click. It's called click bait. So I'm going to read a real event marketing tactic in you. Tell me if it's click bait or an actual good strategy. OK, OK, so click based bad. We don't want to.

[00:06:22] Yeah. Or we're doing it. I'm with you. Yes. Good strategy means it's actually going to work. And click bait or not. Exactly. It's not going to happen. So first one, gating your full agenda behind a registration form. Oh, click bait. I think like we we do this so often, like whether it's speakers or sponsors or who's going to be there.

[00:06:49] I think that is what is going to make you discoverable, whether it's an LLM or whether it's just content that's feeding in. So as quickly as you can get the agenda, that's what everyone wants to see. Agreed. Paying 20 industry creators to post from your show floor. I think it can be a good strategy.

[00:07:12] If you've got the right person, the right connection to the audience, it's not the biggest in the space, which I think is where people get a bit lost. Sometimes you're like, this person's huge, but it's not the right person for your industry. And making sure you want it to feel free and natural, but making sure there's some kind of experience as well, that it's just not transactional. But definitely influencer plus paid media content is like the dream for this year. Yeah, agreed.

[00:07:43] Putting your keynote speaker's face on every ad instead of the event brand. Not every click, click, click bait. I think something there. We want a little bit of speakers. We want to show them. I think they can't dominate or we're going to lose the brand awareness. So it's getting, okay, they're affiliated with the brand. Obviously, you know, the basics that it makes sense that they should be working with that brand.

[00:08:11] But we've done some shows and like they have Pitbull performing or Brian Adams. And let me tell you, those ads, they fly. They don't even care what the show is. So I don't know. Works for some people. Some shows it works. Spending your entire first year budget on awareness with no registration target attached. Oh, dear. No click bait. I mean, if you've got funds like three years to build the brand, then sure.

[00:08:40] I think we're always, I think we under invest in brand awareness in general. But yeah, you need registrations. You need conversions coming in. Yes. Letting AI write your whole ad copy and only picking the winner based on performance. I know. I think, you know, we, you know, we happily use AI all day long for lots of different things, but you need the oversight. You need to really sense check what it's saying.

[00:09:07] And then I think using that with the performance and understanding why that's happening. The concern I see is like people's knowledge and even their memorability is so surface level because AI is doing things. They don't even know what it's saying. So yeah, no. Clickbait. Running paid search against your competitors event. I love that you asked this one. Clickbait for search.

[00:09:37] Tactic for some other channels. Everyone thinks it's a great idea to be like, I'm coming up and everyone thinks they're typing in my competitor. He, he, he. And actually what happens is the user then clicks on the ad and they're like, Oh, I'm here. I didn't mean to come here. I meant to go over there. And now you've just spent money on someone who is just completely not interested. So there's awareness strategies, there's competitive targeting you can do, but not search for sure. Like that. I like that.

[00:10:07] A last chance to register email that goes out four separate times. I'd say strategy. Like it's, it's a busy world out there with messages. I think it has to say something slightly different each time, but I think we see 5,000 ad messages a day. So sometimes I think we worry about bombarding people, but for someone to register, they've seen your brand. It's like 15 times. So we don't stress too much.

[00:10:37] Like if frequency is at like 20 from an ad perspective. So email, get it out. Last chance to register coming, maybe like give them a little, a little difference, but make sure that you are reminding them of when that exact deadline is. Don't change the deadline. Yeah. Okay. Last one. Announcing next year's dates before this year's show is even closed. Oh no. Clickbait. Like we're, we're going to get too confused.

[00:11:03] I think like have them second the show trades, get the dates out for next year, get them booked in. We see great results when we are launching campaigns literally as the show finishes. So I think doing something there, but not confusing them. I think you could run the risk of people showing up in the wrong days and as location, something like that. Amazing. Okay. Well that was clickbait. That was fun. Thanks for playing.

[00:11:28] And now it's time for my favorite session of every episode, the vent of the week, because sometimes the only thing tighter than a load in schedule is our patients. So this is your safe space to let it out your pet peeves and planning pains. So tell us what irks you about events.

[00:11:48] I'll tell you my, my more personal one, first of all, is the same ads that run, but you cannot tell the difference which event it is. So we have seas of people shaking hands, doing product demos. Like we do a comparison sometimes like 10,000 attendees, 20 speakers, all these product demos, innovation. Like we're all saying the same thing and that's not why people come.

[00:12:16] They come for the unique experience that they can have. And I think not speaking directly to your audience and just talking generally about events is just so forgettable. So the event brands that stands out, the ones that are doing something memorable, something emotive, tapping into the audience. So kind of boring, creative is out. And then I think just not having a good flow to the event, like a good way finding.

[00:12:45] So I want to come in, I want to know exactly where I'm going for all to just feel natural and to flow along and for the agenda to be able to make sense with. So like you're going to have a couple of serendipitous moments, which you definitely want. Then you have an agenda that also makes sense that you can get to enough things that make it feel like it's been a good use of time, but you're not overwhelmed and have a constant feeling like you're missing out on everything. So that's probably my in-person piece.

[00:13:15] And yeah, boring, creative would be my drum that I'm banging on for this year. Oh yeah, boring, creative and wayfinding. You have to create less friction for participants when they're coming because if I'm frustrated or can't find where I'm going, I'm just going to fail. And I'm just get overwhelmed and being like, I'm not doing anything today. So I'm out. Yeah. You know, my other thing, now you've got me started, like badges that stabbed me all day long.

[00:13:42] Like, I don't know what the solution is and I've never been somewhere that like, oh, that was the perfect badge. There's got to be a market for something in between a sticker that peels off your clothes, lanyard that can ruin your outfit and stabs you. So I don't know if anyone out there is looking for an idea. I feel that that is ready to be disrupted. I am so ready for the badges to be disrupted.

[00:14:06] And they hang down low at your belly button or they choke you up here or you hang it right where it needs to be. But then it's like covering your boobs and people are just looking at your boobs the whole time. I know. I hate name badges so much. No, me too. I think that could change. But yeah. All right. Idea for the future. Anyone that's listening, time to redesign the name badge. It's early for an upgrade. The sticker is over. That's not good enough, but it needs to be in between a sticker and a badge.

[00:14:37] Yeah. Go create. We'll put it to the world. Let's see what somebody comes up with. Okay. Well, next up, let's event about it. Yeah. This is the part of our show where you get to spill the tea on a memorable event moment. Whether it was a huge success, total disaster, or just pure chaos, we want to hear it. So tell us a funny story about an event you worked or participated in. Okay.

[00:15:03] So one of like our first events that we did, this is like the first thing that's come to mind. So this was must be my biggest core memory. We worked on a series which doesn't exist now, but it was a series of events like protection and management. It was facilities management. It was fire safety, security, like all pretty dry topics sometimes. Very important topics, but like not the sexiest stuff.

[00:15:30] And so they were like, how do we make this more engaging? How do we make this more fun? This is maybe 10 years ago. And we did like a safety and health fashion show at the event. So it was like, oh, like the safety equipment and the high-vis vest. And we sort of did it like, I'm saying we, I was not in the fashion show, but other people were. And they were like out and they were like sort of making all of the like fire safety and

[00:15:58] health and safety clothes sexy. And that was something that will stay with me forever. We were doing the social media and I was thinking, you know, like, what are we going to get? And we knew this fashion show was coming and it just, it just surpassed all expectations and I've never forgotten it. So there's a place for everybody to really jazz up no matter what you need to wear to work. Well, I'm now I'm going to have to go find pictures from said safety fashion.

[00:16:26] Like, I feel like this is a, in the U S especially they do like theme parties in college, you know, and I could see someone having a theme party of like safety equipment only type outfits. Yeah. And there's so much, you know, that once you get into any niche industry event, you're like, oh, there's like so much more to this than I ever had imagined. So lots of ways to make that a lot more fancy for your safety. Do you remember like one outfit from the fashion show that stood out to you?

[00:16:55] I just have real, like, there was so much variety in like the high-vis vests and like the boots. I don't remember a specific outfit. I just remember there was, there was a lot more variation than, than I knew about. So I was humbled by that experience. Do people keep it mostly PG or did it get a little PG-13? I mean, there was a little, there was a little spice in there. You know, you have to give the people what they want. And they had to jazz it up.

[00:17:23] So it was still a business event, but you know, like, I don't know, things were heating up a little bit after lunch. I love that. Okay. Well, we're going to have to go find pictures from. Yeah, I'll find it. They stay health expo. I think it was called. So yeah. Nice. Well, thank you for joining us. That's it for today's episode of event about it, where we connect events and marketing and prove that live experiences aren't just logistics. They're a growth channel.

[00:17:50] If this episode made you think differently about how events drive pipeline brand or growth, make sure you subscribe. That's how you'll catch what's coming next in the event about it after show, where Laura and I get into why she thinks attribution is only getting messier, what to actually measure instead, and what running her own event taught her about her clients. Until next time, keep laughing, keep growing, and keep eventing about it.